The present disclosure relates to an information processing method, an information-processing apparatus, a recording medium, and a program. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to an information processing method, an information-processing apparatus, a recording medium, and a program for recording the program capable of allowing a software event difficult to assign to a hardware event to be used in the same sense as a hardware event.
In general, a development tool for supporting development of an application program has been becoming popular. For example, there is a software development tool for supporting development of an object-oriented program. For more information on this software development tool, the reader is suggested to refer to Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 6-110767.
In addition, there has also been proposed a software development tool for developing the UI (User Interface) of an application program using a state-transition diagram represented by a UML (Unified Modeling Language).
A state-transition diagram is a diagram showing a logical description of an operation to be carried out in every state and the direction of a transition caused by a predetermined event occurring in each specific state as a transition from the specific state to another. The aforementioned development tool for developing the UI (User Interface) of an application software program is a tool for editing the application program by showing the program as a state-transition diagram and reflecting the substance of an operation carried out on the state-transition diagram when the operation is carried out on the state-transition diagram.
An event occurring in each state mentioned above can be an event occurring due to a cause originated in hardware. Such an event is referred to as a hardware event. An example of the hardware event is an operation to press the ‘A’ character key of a keyboard. However, an event can also be an event other than a hardware event such as an operation to enter an input via a key of the keyboard described above. Examples of such an event are an operation to turn on the power supply and the arrival of a mail. Since these other events are not directly related to hardware, the same states as these other events are each generated by software in a pseudo manner, causing a transition to take place as if one of these other events had occurred. Since these other events are not directly related to hardware, they are each referred to as a software event.
In the apparatus in related art, software events each difficult to assign to a hardware event are collectively displayed on a separate window and manipulated separately from hardware events. By handling software events in this way, however, every time the user carries out an operation on a software event, the user needs change its line of sight to the separate window. Thus, the ease of operation deteriorates.